As the fall semester comes to a close and the opportunity of a fresh start draws near, SGA is in the process of updating its current constitution to better serve the organization next semester.

The possibility of adding a fourth committee and revising the duties and responsibilities of the legislative liaison position are the SGA executive board’s main focus during its constitutional update, according to Chuck Rust, legislative liaison of SGA.

“The constitution has been needing an update for about two years now, and we’re happy to finally be able to make it happen. These revisions are not a major overhaul of any regulations or definitions that currently exist. This review is simply an effort to make sure that our binding document is consistent with what we need to accomplish as SGA,” Rust said.

According to Rust, SGA wants to achieve three things- address any grammatical, spelling and consistency concerns; add a fourth committee pertaining to academic concerns and add responsibility to the legislative liaison position.

Currently, SGA has three committees: the Student Rights Committee, the University Improvements Committee and the Finance Committee. SGA would like to change the name of the University Improvements committee to University Initiatives Committee and add the Academic Concerns Committee to the constitution.

The University Initiatives Committee would continue to address concerns pertaining to campus parking, campus safety and the quality of life on campus. The Academic Concerns Committee would address concerns pertaining to any student academic concerns, such as redesigning and making public student course evaluations.
Revisions to the legislative liaison position include changing the name of the position to chief of staff. The chief of staff would also oversee and meet directly with all four committee chairs, according to Erik Pederson, president of SGA.

“Currently the committee chairs meet with Allen, vice president of SGA, instead of Chuck, legislative liaison. It’s more effective if the committee chairs work directly with Chuck since it cuts out any middlemen,” Pederson said.

SGA’s executive board also wants to revise the operational aspect of SGA. Currently, the executive board reports to Erik Pederson, president. However, SGA would like for the executive board to report to Allen Hornung, vice president, who would then report to Pederson.

The executive board will present the updated constitution to the Senate in January. The Senate will then vote to approve or not approve of the revisions.
“If all goes well, the updated constitution will be approved and implemented early next semester,” Rust said.